Another large homeschool family in the news

[EmseB]

I guess I don't really want an answer, but I don't know how a husband, even severely controlling, could keep a woman from getting an IUD, or taking a pill, or putting in a nuva ring or something like that, even if she had to hide it. Especially in a situation where the woman works outside the home and is away from the husband for significant hours of the day it seems implausible that there wouldn't be some way to use birth control that he would be unaware of.

 

ETA: I have no issue with big families at all, I don't use hormonal bc myself for various reasons, just commenting on the previous discussion.

[KungFuPanda]

If they’re not legally homeschooling then they’re just truant and headlines shouldn’t back up their bogus claims. 

[LucyStoner]

1 hour ago, EmseB said:

I guess I don't really want an answer, but I don't know how a husband, even severely controlling, could keep a woman from getting an IUD, or taking a pill, or putting in a nuva ring or something like that, even if she had to hide it. Especially in a situation where the woman works outside the home and is away from the husband for significant hours of the day it seems implausible that there wouldn't be some way to use birth control that he would be unaware of.

 

ETA: I have no issue with big families at all, I don't use hormonal bc myself for various reasons, just commenting on the previous discussion.

 

I know abuse survivors who couldn’t so much as buy a cup of coffee without their abuser’s permission.  

If someone is suddenly not getting pregnant, don’t y’all realize an abuser can put two and two together?  I mean, come on.  They have a kid a year and that suddenly stops.  He’s gonna figure it out. And what price might be paid then? 

Phone app trackers, financial control, intuiting that the person is keeping a secret.  There are so many ways to keep tabs on every dollar someone is spending and more or less every minute of their damn time.  If you can’t imagine it, count your blessings.   

This is all speculation in reaction to the post blaming her for having 5 more kids with him.  Maybe she made that choice.  Maybe that choice wasn’t hers to make.  It’s really NOT that far fetched.  

 

[LMD]

It really isn't that far fetched unfortunately LucyStoner. Controlling abusers wouldn't let you go to the doctor alone and ask for a prescription, or the pharmacy! They would notice extra money coming out of accounts. More than that, they have put in the work to instill fear and self-policing in their victim. When this is your normal life you don't even have the capacity to think of solutions like that, all your energy is going to trauma - especially with kids - and avoiding the next explosion. This is living in a war zone.

 

[Carrie12345]

On 5/16/2018 at 2:11 AM, SKL said:

I don't understand why the news keeps reporting the parents' denials and excuses.  I mean everyone denies their crimes, right?  Or was the photo / video with the poop fake?

I mean my house can get pretty messy.  I guarantee it would be messy if I had 10 young kids.  If the wrong CPS agent came over on the wrong day, it might not go well.  But poop and mold all over?  No.  Not in my worst day's worst nightmare.

My brain saw it (reporting the denials) as evidence that something is not right, beyond the obvious.  Like, pointing out that these people don't consider themselves "caught", because they really don't think they've done anything wrong.  It's trying to (in my view) point out how far gone they are.

I do agree with many others that some of the pictures illustrate messes that are likely to happen with 10 kids in a 2-working-parent (with an infant, no less) household and no hired or family help.  The bathroom thing, I'm not even going to touch b/c omg.  But the toys and junk with 10 all under teen ages?  I don't like it, but it makes some sense when I think about when I had 5 under 13 (one being a baby.)  I suppose I mostly trust the reports of food and garbage (based on that bathroom) but I'd hate to find out that that's defined by old sippy cups under the couch and sticky candy wrappers under beds, or I was probably in much more danger than I thought when all of my kids were little!

The documented abuse puts it all in another light for me.  I hope these kids recover, and I hope the mom is able to receive help to see if she is able to face reality and make a healthy life. 

[Katy]

The only reason it's news is the size of the family.  Otherwise this is unfortunately quite common.

My concern is with that history why wasn't CPS involved before this?

[Guest]

7 hours ago, EmseB said:

I guess I don't really want an answer, but I don't know how a husband, even severely controlling, could keep a woman from getting an IUD, or taking a pill, or putting in a nuva ring or something like that, even if she had to hide it. Especially in a situation where the woman works outside the home and is away from the husband for significant hours of the day it seems implausible that there wouldn't be some way to use birth control that he would be unaware of.

 

ETA: I have no issue with big families at all, I don't use hormonal bc myself for various reasons, just commenting on the previous discussion.

This is my view as well. 

Also, I do not give her a pass, @LucyStoner, because she is standing outside her filthy home, “explaining” how people misjudge her douchbag husband because he has scary-looking tattoos all over. She also believes she is an “amazing” mother. I don’t see her thankful that she finally has a way out of her hellish life. 

[Guest]

Quote

t’s just not as simple as “I would never”.  It could well be that having more kids was what she wanted or it could be that it’s what he wanted and her continued compliance saved her life.  

To me, whether she wanted more kids or not is totally moot. If the nest is flimsy, you don’t lay eggs, no matter what your dream family would have been. Her denials of the situation and her assurances that all is well make me unable to give her a pass. If actual DV charges and police involvement already happened in 2011, I do not buy that she was utterly helpless to get out of the situation. I know such a thing can happen but I don’t find this case to be such an example. 

Not that my opinion counts for anything. 

[Carrie12345]

5 minutes ago, Quill said:

To me, whether she wanted more kids or not is totally moot. If the nest is flimsy, you don’t lay eggs, no matter what your dream family would have been. Her denials of the situation and her assurances that all is well make me unable to give her a pass. If actual DV charges and police involvement already happened in 2011, I do not buy that she was utterly helpless to get out of the situation. I know such a thing can happen but I don’t find this case to be such an example. 

Not that my opinion counts for anything. 

I'm trying to follow your line of thought...  Are you saying she happily, intentionally, and of sound mind, CHOSE to continue this life?  That this is what she wanted?

I have no difficulty believing those kids need to be protected from her, but that doesn't negate the horrors she seems to have experienced (from my view.)

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Carrie12345 said:

I'm trying to follow your line of thought...  Are you saying she happily, intentionally, and of sound mind, CHOSE to continue this life?  That this is what she wanted?

I have no difficulty believing those kids need to be protected from her, but that doesn't negate the horrors she seems to have experienced (from my view.)

Lucy Stoner said “she may well have wanted to have ten kids; she may have not.” I am saying, if she wanted ten kids, but then came to understand that the five she already had were unsafe as well as herself, then wanting ten kids is moot. It does not matter what your dream family was when it becomes evident that this isn’t that and cannot be. 

[Katy]

She was likely raised in domestic violence, addiction, and filth so it's normal to her.  So normal that she's not thinking like a rational person who wants to protect her children or prevent other children from being born.

[Bluegoat]

1 hour ago, Carrie12345 said:

I'm trying to follow your line of thought...  Are you saying she happily, intentionally, and of sound mind, CHOSE to continue this life?  That this is what she wanted?

I have no difficulty believing those kids need to be protected from her, but that doesn't negate the horrors she seems to have experienced (from my view.)

 

I don't know.  I don't disagree with what LS is saying, but I also think people can be pretty complicated, including with regard to the things they choose.  "Sound mind" likely no, but then I don't think the husband is likely of sound mind either, but I think he has some culpability for his actions.

There are women who are hoarders, including of children.  There are women who are attracted to men who are violent, even if they don't like it when it is directed against them and their kids.  There are women who find something about a situation like that emotionally satisfying.  There are people who keep making those kinds of choices, creating those situations and drama.  

[Katy]

5 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

 

I don't know.  I don't disagree with what LS is saying, but I also think people can be pretty complicated, including with regard to the things they choose.  "Sound mind" likely no, but then I don't think the husband is likely of sound mind either, but I think he has some culpability for his actions.

There are women who are hoarders, including of children.  There are women who are attracted to men who are violent, even if they don't like it when it is directed against them and their kids.  There are women who find something about a situation like that emotionally satisfying.  There are people who keep making those kinds of choices, creating those situations and drama.  

 

This.  Though I was hesitant to like it because it sounds like something akin to victim blaming.  It's not victim blaming in as much that healthy people don't make those choices.

If you're raised in violence and drama then peace and safety not only doesn't seem normal to you, it doesn't seem safe.  We've had 7 year olds raised in chaos who seem to make it their mission to create as much chaos as possible. They don't feel safe or in one case, couldn't sleep until someone is close to screaming and the tension is high.  In cases like this, danger seems to equal love and passion, and safety is boring and uncomfortable because nothing can be that easy or safe.

Obviously this isn't true in every case.  Sometimes a healthy woman gets charmed by a psychopath who manipulates her until she questions her own judgment and she doesn't recognize the problem is him until he does something so over the line that the "get out of this or he's going to kill you" alarm bells go off. IME healthy people don't have their homes filled with human and animal waste though. So this isn't likely to be one of those cases.

[SKL]

The wife is probably (to put it un-scientifically) addicted to adrenaline.  Hopefully she will have a chance now to detox from all those years of crazy and start thinking relatively sane thoughts after some time.

I feel sorry for her.

I've been in shorter-term situations of brain-manipulating abuse.  It looks impossible from the outside, but it's real.  And you periodically tell yourself you aren't going to let it happen any more, but then it does and you forget where the line between sane / insane lies.  It keeps moving.

[LucyStoner]

5 hours ago, Quill said:

This is my view as well. 

Also, I do not give her a pass, @LucyStoner, because she is standing outside her filthy home, “explaining” how people misjudge her douchbag husband because he has scary-looking tattoos all over. She also believes she is an “amazing” mother. I don’t see her thankful that she finally has a way out of her hellish life. 

 

Understanding DV doesn't mean I am giving her "a pass". It's just not that simple.  It seems to me that she has been wholly unable to act in the best interest of her kids. What she is saying now may or may not be how she really feels or what she really thinks.  Nor do I think that being a DV victim means that she carries no responsibility for what she has done or allowed done to her kids.  All I am saying is that it's not hard to imagine that she may have had very little say in how many kids she had and that it's not rare for women to end up staying with their abusers, for a lot of reasons.  

5 hours ago, Quill said:

To me, whether she wanted more kids or not is totally moot. If the nest is flimsy, you don’t lay eggs, no matter what your dream family would have been. Her denials of the situation and her assurances that all is well make me unable to give her a pass. If actual DV charges and police involvement already happened in 2011, I do not buy that she was utterly helpless to get out of the situation. I know such a thing can happen but I don’t find this case to be such an example. 

1

 

You are foolish to think that him being arrested and charged means anything, well, meaningful.  

The prosecutor finally charged my brother with a crime after numerous police visits, several arrests, and several psychiatric holds.  He'd assaulted her dozens and dozens of times, permanently impairing one of her hands, before he was charged with ONE SINGLE ASSAULT and then, guess what happened?  He wouldn't take the deal they offered.  He's entitled to a free lawyer who knew how bad of a witness my SIL would make AND so, knowing my SIL wouldn't come across well on the stand, they dropped the charges.  

Also, remember that courts RARELY see DV against mom even with a conviction or allegations of child abuse short of an actual conviction and sufficient reason to limit the abuser's parental rights.  Many women with kids stay longer because they would rather be with their kids 100% of the time than share custody or have the abuser have unsupervised parenting time.  My SIL went into her restraining order hearing armed with a fat binder of evidence (properly served to him before+ delivered to the court in time for the commissioner to review) and the social worker assigned by the court recommended that my brother get one 4 hour visit a week, supervised pending the results of a chemical dependency eval.  The commissioner gave her the permanent restraining order.  She also ordered classes (which my brother never took) and declined to order the chemical dependency evaluation since he was accusing her of the same AND THEN she did absolutely nothing to limit my brother's parenting time, visitations etc.  Told them to work it out. There were many subsequent layers but OMG was that ever the wrong decision.  

I would love to say that there was something unusual about my SIL and brother's case and that usually the courts protect the kids and empower survivors to leave and stay gone, but that's just not the case.  My SIL, niece, and nephew are 3 of countless women and children who are not well served by the criminal or family court system.  

[LucyStoner]

6 hours ago, Katy said:

The only reason it's news is the size of the family.  Otherwise this is unfortunately quite common.

My concern is with that history why wasn't CPS involved before this?

 

In 11 years, the only time CPS took any action in regards to my niece and nephew was when they got a report that the water was off.  That's with multiple CPS calls from the police, CPS calls from me, one self-report from my SIL and the school failing to call the numerous times they should have.   

Do not have faith that CPS is there when needed.  In most states, they are too understaffed to function minimally, much less optimally.  Unless the child is already in state custody, things usually have been able to persist for a very long time before CPS acts.  

[Katy]

Lucy - I'm sad to hear that CPS is so understaffed in most areas that this happens again and again without any sort of investigation. We've been privileged to live in areas where they are well staffed and CPS still screws up an alarming amount of time.

I'm not surprised to hear about your SIL's situation however, because courts aren't really interested in the best interest of the child.  From a legal perspective children are essentially property and parenting is a constitutional right. I really think that should be changed and children should be given their own rights.  Especially with everything that has become obvious regarding attachment issues in the last 20 years.

[SKL]

Oh and the mom is probably acting on the assumption that the dad is going to get out and be able to torture / kill her and the kids if she doesn't say the right thing.  After all, he was released before after some pretty extreme behavior.  It's not at all unusual for a DV victim to be murdered despite doing everything right per the law.

I just don't like the way they are telling on the news what she is saying as if it had any weight whatsoever.  They are obviously only reporting it for shock value, to make a bigger mockery of her.

[Guest]

@LucyStoner, I don’t have a dog in this fight and, fortunately, I am not closely acquainted with how DV cases, CPS, restraining orders, etc. all work or fail to work, and I’m sure it also varies greatly from one area to another. 

I am saying I have no soft spot in my heart for that mom. I would have a very hard time pleaing mercy on her behalf, based on the information I have. It is hard for me to imagine she had no options under which she could have avoided having ten (or eleven) children, especially when the on-record evidence illustrates that things were amiss seven years ago and she has since that time had five(!) or six additional kids. 

As another poster upthhread said, I would not even consider her a good candidate to have a dog, let alone a houseful of kids who don’t even have the benefit of outside education. I would not even recommend someone gets a puppy if they have that kind of schedule, let alone if there was any evidence of abuse and neglect. 

People like her make me furious. I don’t have a soft spot for such a person. It is fortunate I have no role in this case because I don’t care for either her or her asshat husband. I hope they both blankety-blank-blank until the end of time. 

[LucyStoner]

6 minutes ago, Katy said:

Lucy - I'm sad to hear that CPS is so understaffed in most areas that this happens again and again without any sort of investigation. We've been privileged to live in areas where they are well staffed and CPS still screws up an alarming amount of time.

I'm not surprised to hear about your SIL's situation however, because courts aren't really interested in the best interest of the child.  From a legal perspective children are essentially property and parenting is a constitutional right. I really think that should be changed and children should be given their own rights.  Especially with everything that has become obvious regarding attachment issues in the last 20 years.

 

This is one reason why I diverge from much of the homeschooling community.  HSLDA will argue against anything that expands children's rights and contracts parental rights.  

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, LucyStoner said:

 

This is one reason why I diverge from much of the homeschooling community.  HSLDA will argue against anything that expands children's rights and contracts parental rights.  

A point of agreement here. 

[LucyStoner]

10 minutes ago, Quill said:

@LucyStoner, I don’t have a dog in this fight and, fortunately, I am not closely acquainted with how DV cases, CPS, restraining orders, etc. all work or fail to work, and I’m sure it also varies greatly from one area to another. 

I am saying I have no soft spot in my heart for that mom. I would have a very hard time pleaing mercy on her behalf, based on the information I have. It is hard for me to imagine she had no options under which she could have avoided having ten (or eleven) children, especially when the on-record evidence illustrates that things were amiss seven years ago and she has since that time had five(!) or six additional kids. 

As another poster upthhread said, I would not even consider her a good candidate to have a dog, let alone a houseful of kids who don’t even have the benefit of outside education. I would not even recommend someone gets a puppy if they have that kind of schedule, let alone if there was any evidence of abuse and neglect. 

People like her make me furious. I don’t have a soft spot for such a person. It is fortunate I have no role in this case because I don’t care for either her or her asshat husband. I hope they both blankety-blank-blank until the end of time. 

 

I'm not sure why you think my comments mean I have a soft spot for this woman.  I just don't think it's even 1/100th as possible/probable/likely/safe as you think it is for people to leave their abusers.  

The tone that you use to criticize this woman though?  It's part of why so many DV cases get dropped.  The prosecutors know who will be sitting in those jury boxes and too often it is people who will look at the victim and judge, condemn and disbelieve her for not leaving sooner or not "looking right" or "talking right".  

[Katy]

1 minute ago, LucyStoner said:

 

This is one reason why I diverge from much of the homeschooling community.  HSLDA will argue against anything that expands children's rights and contracts parental rights.  

 

How to implement it is a question. Possibly worthy of a spin-off topic. In typical society the line of what is appropriate and what is abusive is likely to change a great deal over the course of a single 20 year period. Which is of course nothing in comparison to true abuse, but then we've all read the arguments here about what constitutes educational neglect by religious groups and what doesn't.

[LucyStoner]

Scroll down on the BBC article on this family and you will see this.  

Man murders 4 people, tried to murder his ex.  She loses her 3 kids and gets shot because the family court didn't f-ing listen.  These are not rare stories. 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44159588

Her babies are dead.  This is why people stay.  The instinct to survive is strong and sometimes what it takes to survive the longest or protect your kids makes no sense to people who either haven't lived it or witnessed it up close.  

[Bluegoat]

4 hours ago, Katy said:

 

This.  Though I was hesitant to like it because it sounds like something akin to victim blaming.  It's not victim blaming in as much that healthy people don't make those choices.

If you're raised in violence and drama then peace and safety not only doesn't seem normal to you, it doesn't seem safe.  We've had 7 year olds raised in chaos who seem to make it their mission to create as much chaos as possible. They don't feel safe or in one case, couldn't sleep until someone is close to screaming and the tension is high.  In cases like this, danger seems to equal love and passion, and safety is boring and uncomfortable because nothing can be that easy or safe.

Obviously this isn't true in every case.  Sometimes a healthy woman gets charmed by a psychopath who manipulates her until she questions her own judgment and she doesn't recognize the problem is him until he does something so over the line that the "get out of this or he's going to kill you" alarm bells go off. IME healthy people don't have their homes filled with human and animal waste though. So this isn't likely to be one of those cases.

 

I have really come to hate the term victim blaming.  It seems to knock the nuances out of so many topics.  Anyway, I think this same kind of thing applies to all kinds of situations.  I think of my dad, who isn't entirely mentally healthy.  He has continually all his life made the same bad decisions over and over again - he's had to declare bankruptcy three times, and these were just short-sighted and stupid decisions, not fraught situations - things like taking his retirement savings and buying a very expensive motorbike.  And he's also made some good decisions - he gave up drinking, he gave up smoking, etc.  But he just can't seem to step back from certain behaviours that cause him problems. (Not to mention other people.)  He makes excuses or tells fibs, to account for it all.  Is it his fault, or is he ill?  My answer is "yes."

I agree with you, the types of things going on in this situation look to me like it's not just a matter of being unable to act out of fear, her decision making is compromised in some way.

[LucyStoner]

Victim blaming isn't critiquing a man for his poor financial circumstances, unless his poverty was caused by the criminal acts of others. Victim blaming is shifting the blame from the rapists to the raped, the abuser to the abused, from the person who punched you in the face to you for being stupid enough to be punched in the face.  

Victim blaming is why I, an adult survivor of child rape, felt like it was my fault for years. It's why that woman who was shot in Texas and is mourning three kids is probably going to wonder at some point "maybe I should have stayed.  If I had stayed, my kids might still be alive.  What was I thinking?"  It's not knocking out the nuances, it's telling people to knock off the bull-shit that engenders a culture of violence.  

I'm actually someone who struggles to not be too harsh with DV survivors at times.  This is partly because I have a big heart for kids and often the best interests of the kids aren't well served by a mom mired in a DV dynamic.  This is partly because my MIL stayed needlessly with my abusive FIL, when it was likely safe to leave, to the detriment of my husband and his brother.  And partly because I do have first-hand experience setting boundaries in a relationship so a DV dynamic didn't take hold so I too fall prey to the hubris of "No one would do that to me" at times.  Doesn't mean I'm right.  

 

[SKL]

Yeah, there are some people who are wired to not take any shit; it's harder to break them down.  Some people are easier to abuse and confuse.

I fall on the latter side of the spectrum (when it comes to relationships), so maybe that's why I can kind of understand it.

Watching my kids growing up, I see both sides of this ... after being insulted or threatened, one kid will cower/cry, and the other will go up and give the aggressor a verbal (or possibly physical) smackdown.  The latter considers herself the "bodyguard" of certain friends who are easily victimized.

[Katy]

Next we'll probably start hearing about sexual abuse.  Because there's an 80% correlation.

[Katy]

4 minutes ago, Arctic Mama said:

I keep hoping those babies were spared that ?

 

Unless a child confesses it immediately, it will take a few months to know.  They'll want them in a stable home for 12 weeks before even doing an evaluation, and that assumes the waiting lists to see those specialists are as short as 3 months. In our area there's one physician in the surrounding 30 counties that's qualified to do evaluations like that - both from a physical standpoint from interviewing without leading.

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, Katy said:

 

Unless a child confesses it immediately, it will take a few months to know.  They'll want them in a stable home for 12 weeks before even doing an evaluation, and that assumes the waiting lists to see those specialists are as short as 3 months. In our area there's one physician in the surrounding 30 counties that's qualified to do evaluations like that - both from a physical standpoint from interviewing without leading.

I’m pretty astonished they already have such detailed info as what’s in the report @Arctic Mama just posted. Those are extreme things. I probably better stop learning more about them now...

[Katy]

58 minutes ago, Quill said:

I’m pretty astonished they already have such detailed info as what’s in the report @Arctic Mama just posted. Those are extreme things. I probably better stop learning more about them now...

 

Social workers are trained to ask about violence in non-leading ways.  It's much more difficult to ask children about sexual abuse in non-leading ways because it's something small children often don't know anything about. I don't know about everywhere, but here only specialists interview about it.  Although when we've had children here whose behaviors led us to be concerned about their history we were encouraged to do things like read books about body safety and private parts and telling if anyone has done anything that makes them uncomfortable. If they volunteered information on their own after reading a non-specific book like that, so be it.  But otherwise no one is to ask questions. 

[LMD]

6 hours ago, LucyStoner said:

 

Understanding DV doesn't mean I am giving her "a pass". It's just not that simple.  It seems to me that she has been wholly unable to act in the best interest of her kids. What she is saying now may or may not be how she really feels or what she really thinks.  Nor do I think that being a DV victim means that she carries no responsibility for what she has done or allowed done to her kids.  All I am saying is that it's not hard to imagine that she may have had very little say in how many kids she had and that it's not rare for women to end up staying with their abusers, for a lot of reasons.  

 

You are foolish to think that him being arrested and charged means anything, well, meaningful.  

The prosecutor finally charged my brother with a crime after numerous police visits, several arrests, and several psychiatric holds.  He'd assaulted her dozens and dozens of times, permanently impairing one of her hands, before he was charged with ONE SINGLE ASSAULT and then, guess what happened?  He wouldn't take the deal they offered.  He's entitled to a free lawyer who knew how bad of a witness my SIL would make AND so, knowing my SIL wouldn't come across well on the stand, they dropped the charges.  

Also, remember that courts RARELY see DV against mom even with a conviction or allegations of child abuse short of an actual conviction and sufficient reason to limit the abuser's parental rights.  Many women with kids stay longer because they would rather be with their kids 100% of the time than share custody or have the abuser have unsupervised parenting time.  My SIL went into her restraining order hearing armed with a fat binder of evidence (properly served to him before+ delivered to the court in time for the commissioner to review) and the social worker assigned by the court recommended that my brother get one 4 hour visit a week, supervised pending the results of a chemical dependency eval.  The commissioner gave her the permanent restraining order.  She also ordered classes (which my brother never took) and declined to order the chemical dependency evaluation since he was accusing her of the same AND THEN she did absolutely nothing to limit my brother's parenting time, visitations etc.  Told them to work it out. There were many subsequent layers but OMG was that ever the wrong decision.  

I would love to say that there was something unusual about my SIL and brother's case and that usually the courts protect the kids and empower survivors to leave and stay gone, but that's just not the case.  My SIL, niece, and nephew are 3 of countless women and children who are not well served by the criminal or family court system.  

 

Sounds about right. I'm sorry for your family's experience. I would do a lot to avoid rolling the family court dice.

Also, leaving a dv situation is the most dangerous time for the woman. 

She's a victim who was unable to protect herself or her children. She doesn't get a pass but I don't think she deserves the blame for being trapped by a monster.

[umsami]

22 hours ago, EmseB said:

I guess I don't really want an answer, but I don't know how a husband, even severely controlling, could keep a woman from getting an IUD, or taking a pill, or putting in a nuva ring or something like that, even if she had to hide it. Especially in a situation where the woman works outside the home and is away from the husband for significant hours of the day it seems implausible that there wouldn't be some way to use birth control that he would be unaware of.

 

ETA: I have no issue with big families at all, I don't use hormonal bc myself for various reasons, just commenting on the previous discussion.

 

Very easy.  Those things come through on insurance.  He'd see the statement of benefits, and know.  Plus as LucyStoner said, he'd figure it out.  Then he'd likely reach his hand inside of her and go searching for something to remove. Imagine the damage that could be done internally by an angry abusive man who has no clue to female anatomy.  

Cash pay would be too expensive to hide, my guess is he had complete financial control.... as that as the most common form of domestic violence.  

 

I'll also add that DV survivors are routinely charged with "Failure to Protect" in CPS/DCF cases....far less extreme than this.  (Although warranted in this case, no doubt.)  The reality of being victims themselves does not factor in, sadly.  The reality of family court giving abusers sole custody 60% of the time that they go after it is well known by most survivors.  There are so many reasons why people stay.   Knowing that he'd have unsupervised (likely) custody 50% or more of the time makes women stay in horrible situations...because at least they're there to mitigate some of the abuse.  

[umsami]

7 hours ago, Arctic Mama said:

I’m having a harder and harder time scrounging up any sort of understanding for the mom.  It sounds like she was involved and accepting of extensive torture:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/california-couple-waterboarded-kids-authorities-021256166.html

 

This isn’t describing normal discipline gone wrong or playing too roughly or even a smack across the face in anger.  It’s sadistic and intentional.

I find it interesting that the article headings and even the article itself focus on the Mom, when it appears from other sources that the father was known abusive...and likely the "lead" abuser.  There is definitely a double standard at play regarding expectations of mothers and fathers. 

 

ETA: I think she's guilty and should do jail time. I also 100% believe she's a victim herself.   But I find the article strange in that first it calls the father "her partner"...and then later on her husband, but 99% of the article is of the "evil abusive Mom" variety.   

[Frances]

6 hours ago, Quill said:

I’m pretty astonished they already have such detailed info as what’s in the report @Arctic Mama just posted. Those are extreme things. I probably better stop learning more about them now...

I think this all started in March when the boy was reported missing.

[Carrie12345]

On 5/16/2018 at 11:16 PM, EmseB said:

I guess I don't really want an answer, but I don't know how a husband, even severely controlling, could keep a woman from getting an IUD, or taking a pill, or putting in a nuva ring or something like that, even if she had to hide it. Especially in a situation where the woman works outside the home and is away from the husband for significant hours of the day it seems implausible that there wouldn't be some way to use birth control that he would be unaware of.

 

ETA: I have no issue with big families at all, I don't use hormonal bc myself for various reasons, just commenting on the previous discussion.

If I'm remembering correctly, she worked the night shift. Assuming she had the "ability" to fudge her schedule to him or get a little time off and not tell him, the hours wouldn't be conducive to getting any sort of free or cash clinic appointments.  If they even had one of those.  My closest Planned Parenthood closed a year or so ago.  Now our closest one is about an hour away. You'd have to build a LOT of extra time during the day to hide an appointment there. (Even when I lived in suburbia 20 years ago, my closest PP was about 40-45 minutes away.)

Hiding birth control doesn't sound easy to me at all.  I can't think of a place in my house that my non-abusive husband couldn't come across it.  Maybe in a hollowed out book, but only because we have so many books.  But he or the kids could still technically stumble across it.  If he was a controlling, abusive monster? That'd be way too risky.  Withholding sex after an IUD insertion could be risky, too.  Assuming one could afford that without notice and sneak an appointment.

But someone also mentioned the fact of being obviously fertile, which would suddenly and noticeably stop. Abusive men always suspect "trickery", even when it doesn't exist. 2 years without a baby, if one managed to pull off hiding birth control, would set off alarms.

[Carrie12345]

6 hours ago, umsami said:

 

ETA: I think she's guilty and should do jail time. I also 100% believe she's a victim herself.   But I find the article strange in that first it calls the father "her partner"...and then later on her husband, but 99% of the article is of the "evil abusive Mom" variety.   

There's no denying those kids aren't safe with her.  That's certainly the priority.  She didn't protect those kids, so the state has a duty to do it.

But I think it's another example of how we, as a whole, try to ignore how mental health actually works. It's like admitting an understanding of influences has to equate with acceptance of the crimes and other awful behavior.  It doesn't.  The children in this case are at incredibly high risk for serious, lifelong issues.  Today, we're incredibly empathetic to them.  Do we stop when they become adults?  Do we expect their trauma to be irrelevant once they turn 18? 21? 32?  That they should suddenly be able to fix themselves and erase their experiences because they're no longer cute little kids?  Pull up their big boy/girl pants because they were victimized so long ago?  It doesn't work that way.

[EmseB]

3 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:

There's no denying those kids aren't safe with her.  That's certainly the priority.  She didn't protect those kids, so the state has a duty to do it.

But I think it's another example of how we, as a whole, try to ignore how mental health actually works. It's like admitting an understanding of influences has to equate with acceptance of the crimes and other awful behavior.  It doesn't.  The children in this case are at incredibly high risk for serious, lifelong issues.  Today, we're incredibly empathetic to them.  Do we stop when they become adults?  Do we expect their trauma to be irrelevant once they turn 18? 21? 32?  That they should suddenly be able to fix themselves and erase their experiences because they're no longer cute little kids?  Pull up their big boy/girl pants because they were victimized so long ago?  It doesn't work that way.

So at what point do people (abused or not) have personal agency or accountability for their actions? People live with all kinds of trauma and it affects some more than others, but that doesn't seem like an excuse, more just a reason.

As for all the reasons why she couldn't get bc because he was so controlling, I can grant that all those things could be possible. From what I'm reading about the case, I highly doubt it, but it is also hard to fathom a woman havin so many kids just to satisfy her own sick desires.

I will say that at one point I received women's health services that didn't show up on my insurance at an appointment DH would have never known about without a gps tracker on my car, and I didn't even have a job outside the home at that time and wasn't trying to be secretive, so that probably colors my opinion a bit on the hypotheticals.

[Carrie12345]

6 minutes ago, EmseB said:

So at what point do people (abused or not) have personal agency or accountability for their actions? People live with all kinds of trauma and it affects some more than others, but that doesn't seem like an excuse, more just a reason.

As for all the reasons why she couldn't get bc because he was so controlling, I can grant that all those things could be possible. From what I'm reading about the case, I highly doubt it, but it is also hard to fathom a woman havin so many kids just to satisfy her own sick desires.

I will say that at one point I received women's health services that didn't show up on my insurance at an appointment DH would have never known about without a gps tracker on my car, and I didn't even have a job outside the home at that time and wasn't trying to be secretive, so that probably colors my opinion a bit on the hypotheticals.

Did you read my post?  It was ENTIRELY about the coexistence of reasons and accountability.

[EmseB]

1 hour ago, Carrie12345 said:

Did you read my post?  It was ENTIRELY about the coexistence of reasons and accountability.

Yes, but your conclusion seemed to lead to a point where accountability/agency can't ever be truly attained because of the reasons, and I can't imagine that's what you meant, thus my question.

Do we ever stop being empathetic to someone who has endured abuse? In my mind, no. But I do have an expectation, I think, that empathy is going to look different for a child than it is for an adult. It is going to look different if the person got out of a bad situation 2 weeks ago or 10 years ago. It is going to look very different when the adult victim becomes the perpetrator.

[Carrie12345]

33 minutes ago, EmseB said:

Yes, but your conclusion seemed to lead to a point where accountability/agency can't ever be truly attained because of the reasons, and I can't imagine that's what you meant, thus my question.

Do we ever stop being empathetic to someone who has endured abuse? In my mind, no. But I do have an expectation, I think, that empathy is going to look different for a child than it is for an adult. It is going to look different if the person got out of a bad situation 2 weeks ago or 10 years ago. It is going to look very different when the adult victim becomes the perpetrator.

 

I suppose that depends on what you mean by accountability, then.  If you consider justice to be nothing more than punishment, maybe your view of the conclusion is correct.  If you consider rehabilitation addressing mental health concepts, or at least the attempt, to be a component of justice, then I can't understand your interpretation of my remarks. 

There are grown men who went to war and came back well over a decade ago who still aren't pictures of perfect mental health.  Some not by a long shot.  Some we know are lost forever.  Not all commit atrocious crimes, thank goodness, but we (generally) do our best to understand that they, as adults, experienced things that aren't as simple as growing up in order to overcome.  There is no special key to curing trauma related issues in a specific period of time.

We rank the "worthiness" of mental health conditions on completely arbitrary merits, as if brain wiring cares anything about the person's position in society.  It doesn't care whether it's screwing with a child or an adult.  It doesn't care what its fallout is.  At all.  We don't pretend that cancer is less real in adults than it is in children.  Or less damaging in people who've done bad things than it is in upstanding citizens.  But we do expect treatment or, at the very least that humanity can scrape up, symptom management for all of its victims. Even if they're in a jail cell.

[EmseB]

23 minutes ago, Carrie12345 said:

 

I suppose that depends on what you mean by accountability, then.  If you consider justice to be nothing more than punishment, maybe your view of the conclusion is correct.  If you consider rehabilitation addressing mental health concepts, or at least the attempt, to be a component of justice, then I can't understand your interpretation of my remarks. 

There are grown men who went to war and came back well over a decade ago who still aren't pictures of perfect mental health.  Some not by a long shot.  Some we know are lost forever.  Not all commit atrocious crimes, thank goodness, but we (generally) do our best to understand that they, as adults, experienced things that aren't as simple as growing up in order to overcome.  There is no special key to curing trauma related issues in a specific period of time.

We rank the "worthiness" of mental health conditions on completely arbitrary merits, as if brain wiring cares anything about the person's position in society.  It doesn't care whether it's screwing with a child or an adult.  It doesn't care what its fallout is.  At all.  We don't pretend that cancer is less real in adults than it is in children.  Or less damaging in people who've done bad things than it is in upstanding citizens.  But we do expect treatment or, at the very least that humanity can scrape up, symptom management for all of its victims. Even if they're in a jail cell.

I honestly don't know how to respond to most of this because it seems to be based on a whole bunch of assumptions about my positions on things that my question doesn't even imply.

Aside from the fact that we do treat different types of cancers differently based on a whole host of factors, the cancer metaphor really falls apart because mental health encompasses so many more different aspects of a person and who they are than cancer does, unless you happen to be a strict materialist, which I am not. 

And frankly, yeah, if someone is  abusing a bunch of little kids, my empathy towards them at that time looks like nil, because the kids need to be safe regardless of an adult's mental health issues. And that might appear to be quite cold hearted to someone with a mental illness. It doesn't mean I don't care about them or their illness. Circumstances matter even if brain wiring doesn't care about them.

[Carrie12345]

6 minutes ago, EmseB said:

I honestly don't know how to respond to most of this because it seems to be based on a whole bunch of assumptions about my positions on things that my question doesn't even imply.

Aside from the fact that we do treat different types of cancers differently based on a whole host of factors, the cancer metaphor really falls apart because mental health encompasses so many more different aspects of a person and who they are than cancer does, unless you happen to be a strict materialist, which I am not. 

And frankly, yeah, if someone is  abusing a bunch of little kids, my empathy towards them at that time looks like nil, because the kids need to be safe regardless of an adult's mental health issues. And that might appear to be quite cold hearted to someone with a mental illness. It doesn't mean I don't care about them or their illness. Circumstances matter even if brain wiring doesn't care about them.

 

Who ever suggested otherwise? (To the bolded.)

I disagree that the analogy falls apart.  Mental health must be treated differently based on different factors, too.  In both cases, some people barely "fight" and somehow win.  In both cases, some people fight ferociously and lose.  We don't measure people by the nuances of their illness.

[ktgrok]

55 minutes ago, EmseB said:

I honestly don't know how to respond to most of this because it seems to be based on a whole bunch of assumptions about my positions on things that my question doesn't even imply.

Aside from the fact that we do treat different types of cancers differently based on a whole host of factors, the cancer metaphor really falls apart because mental health encompasses so many more different aspects of a person and who they are than cancer does, unless you happen to be a strict materialist, which I am not. 

And frankly, yeah, if someone is  abusing a bunch of little kids, my empathy towards them at that time looks like nil, because the kids need to be safe regardless of an adult's mental health issues. And that might appear to be quite cold hearted to someone with a mental illness. It doesn't mean I don't care about them or their illness. Circumstances matter even if brain wiring doesn't care about them.

I think this comes down to how do we feel versus what actions we take. I know of a situation where a teen abused a young girl. Probably he has been abused as well. One can feel badly that he was abused, and empathetic, and yet still want to create a situation where he cannot abuse again. The parent of the victim has done exactly that - wanting a conviction, mandatory treatment, and probation that involves ongoing monitoring and treatment. she wants him to get better, but it's okay to want her daughter and other children safe even more than she wants good things for him. 

I can feel terribly that a woman is victimized by her husband to the point she is no longer able to protect her children, AND thing that those children need to be removed for their safety. I can acknoledge that the reason she didn't protect them is that she was too traumatized to do so, while still acting on the fact they need protection, and she isn't able to do it. 

 

[SKL]

The amount of sympathy we may or may not have for this mom does not change the fact that her kids need different living arrangements.

I will say that being an abused child doesn't automatically mean the person will be an abuser.  Yes, it is correlated, for obvious (and not-so-obvious) reasons.  But there are people who don't copy what they saw / experienced as kids.  I say this only because I don't want people to assume the worst of the young victims here.

[Arcadia]

From CBS news http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/05/24/father-charged-with-sex-crimes-in-fairfield-child-torture-case/

”Father Charged With Sex Crimes In Fairfield Child Torture Case

FAIRFIELD (CBS SF) — Prosecutors have added four counts of committing lewd acts with a child to the charges against a Fairfield father who is in custody for allegedly abusing and torturing his 10 children.

The Solano County District Attorney’s Office filed four counts of committing lewd acts with a child under 14 against Jonathan Allen at a brief court appearance Thursday. The judge also ruled that Allen and his wife, Ina Rogers, will be tried together.”

[Katy]

Well that was faster than I anticipated.  ?